ALLEGIANT EVERLASTING - One Spark of Fire that Chooses to Thrive
by kw0203417
Summary: In this adaptation of Veronica Roth's final chapters of Allegiant, Tris comes face to face with her new enemy and must choose whether to slip away in the safety of her mother's arms or break free from the grasp of death to be reunited with those left behind. As Four and the others struggle to cope with Tris's state, Tris feels that spark of fire within her; But will it be enough?


**ONE SPARK OF FIRE THAT CHOOSES TO THRIVE**

ADAPTATION OF **VERONICA ROTH'S**

#1 _NEW YORK TIMES_ BESTSELLER **ALLEGIANT**

KEELEA WOODTlsf

**FORWORD**

** I have the highest respect for Veronica Roth and the story she created. The messages, of which there are so many, are powerful and so beautifully portrayed.**

** Tris battles acute internal conflict regarding her identity throughout the course of the books, and though she completes her final task at peace with her parent's death and who she's become, and with an understanding of what true sacrifice is, there isn't enough of an eternal message for her death to be a joyous and restful accomplishment. Therefore it leaves the reader, and the left-behind Tobias Eaton, with an unsettling resolution. I admit that I probably spent too many hours analyzing Roth's work as if it were my own, but regardless of my intuition, it is suggestive that her greatest strength – fighting with this fire in her – is her most consuming weakness. The reader is left not with a feeling of pride for Tris's accomplishments and growth (as was surely intended), but one of disturbance and with a lack of hope and reason for Tobias. It comes across not so much resolving, but disturbing. And missing something . . . missing hope, love, fire. All representative of Tris – and all died with her. **

**In this adaptation, I salvaged as much of Roth's original writing as I could, not tampering with what was unnecessary to change, while still attempting to establish that Tris's fire is consuming, not "so bright [that it] is not meant to last," as Four perceives to be true (I salvaged that, that line was gold), but in a way that is continually being fed, ultimately leading to constant – thriving with the source that feeds her flame – love.**

**I admire these books, these characters, the messages, and the plot line. I saw this adaptation as a project. I hope those who do read it enjoy it. **

**CHAPTER**

**FIFTY**

**TRIS**

"**HOW DID YOU inoculate yourself against the death serum?" he asks me. He's still sitting in his wheelchair, but you don't need to be able to walk to fire a gun. **

**I blink at him, still dazed.**

"**I didn't," I say.**

"**Don't be stupid," David says. "You can't survive the death serum without an inoculation, and I'm the only person in the compound who possesses that substance."**

**I just stare at him, not sure what to say. I didn't inoculate myself. The fact that I'm still standing upright is impossible. There's nothing more to add.**

"**I suppose it no longer matters," he says. "We're here now."**

"**What are you doing here?" I mumble. My lips feel awkwardly large, hard to talk around. I still feel that oily heaviness on my skin, like death is clinging to me even though I have defeated it. I am dimly aware that I left my own gun in the hallway behind me, sure I wouldn't need it if I made it this far.**

"**I knew something was going on," David says. "You've been running around with genetically damaged people all week, Tris, did you think I wouldn't notice?" He shakes his head. "and then your friend Cara was caught trying to manipulate the lights, but she very wisely knocked herself out before she could tell us anything. So I came here, just in case. I'm sad to say I'm not surprised to see you."**

** "You came here alone?" I say. "Not very smart, are you?"**

**His bright eyes squint a little. "Well, you see, I have death serum resistance and a weapon, and you have no way to fight me. There's no way you can steal four virus devices while I have you at gunpoint. I'm afraid you've come all this way for no reason, and it will be at the expense of your life. The death serum may not have killed you, but I am going to. I'm sure you understand – officially we don't allow capital punishment, but I can't have you surviving this."**

**He thinks I'm here to steal the weapons that will reset the experiments, not deploy one of them. **

**Of course he does.**

** I try to guard my expression, though I'm sure it's still slack. I sweep my eyes across the room, searching for the device that will release the memory serum virus. I was ther when Matthew described it to Caleb in painstaking detail earlier: a black box with a silver keypad, marked with a strip of blue tape with a model number written on it. It is one of the only items on the counter along the left wall, just a few feet away from me. But I can't move, or else he'll kill me. I'll have to wait for the right moment, and do it fast.**

** "I know what you did," I say. I start to back up, hoping that the accusation will distract him. "I know you designed the attack simulation. I know you're responsible for my parents' deaths – for my **_**mother's**_** death. I know."**

** "I am not responsible for her death!" David says, the words bursting from him, too loud and too sudden. " I **_**told**_** her what was coming just before the attack began, so she had enough time to escort her loved ones to a safe house. If she had stayed put, she would have lived. But she was a foolish woman who didn't understand making sacrifices for the greater good, and it **_**killed**_** her!"**

** I frown at him. There's something about his reaction – about the glassiness of his eyes – something that he mumbled when Nita shot him with the fear serum – something about **_**her**_**.**

** "Did you love her?" I say. "All those years she was sending you correspondence . . . the reason you told her you couldn't read her updates anymore, after she married my father . . ."**

**David sits still, like a statue, like a man of stone.**

** "I did," he says. "But that time is past."**

**That must be why he welcomed me into his circle of trust, why he gave me so many opportunities. Because I am a piece of her, wearing her hair and speaking with her voice. Because he has spent his life grasping at her and coming up with nothing. **

**I hear footsteps in the hallway outside. The soldiers are coming. Good – I need them to. I need them to be exposed to the airborne serum, to pass it on to the rest of the compound. I hope they wait until the air is clear of death serum.**

** "My mother wasn't a fool," I say. "She just understood something you didn't. That it's not sacrifice if it's someone **_**else**_**'s life you're giving away, it's just evil."**

**I back up another step and say, "She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplaced disgust for another person's genetics. That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own. That's why I need to stop you from 'sacrificing' all those people and their memories. Why I need to rid the world of youonce and for all."**

**I shake my head. **

** "I didn't come here to steal anything, David."**

** I twist and lunge toward the device. The gun goes off and pain races through my body. I don't even know where the bullet hit me.**

** I can still hear Caleb repeating the code for Matthew. With a quaking hand I type in the numbers on the keypad.**

** The gun goes off again.**

**Pain is still surging through me in waves, but I hear Caleb's voice speaking gain. **_**The green button.**_

**So much pain.**

**But how, when my body feels so numb?**

**I start to fall, and slam my hand into the keypad on my way down. A light turns on behind the green button. **

**I hear a beep, and a churning sound.**

**I slide to the floor. I feel something warm through my shirt, and around my upper back. Red. Blood is a strange color. Dark.**

**From the corner of my eye, I see David slumped over in his chair, clutching his body.**

**And my **_**mother**_** walking out from behind him. **

**She is dressed in the same clothes she wore the last time I saw her, Abnegation gray, stained with her blood, with bare arms to show her tattoo. There are still bullet holes in her shirt; through them I can see her wounded skin, red but no longer bleeding, like she's frozen in time. Her dull blond hair is tied back in a knot, but a few loose strands frame her face in gold.**

**I know she can't be alive, but I don't know if I'm seeing her now because I'm delirious from the blood loss or if the death serum has addled my thoughts or if she is here in some other way.**

**She kneels next to me and touches a cool hand to my cheek.**

"**Hello, Beatrice," she says, and she smiles.**

"**Am I done yet?" I say, and I'm not sure if I actually say it or if I just think it and she hears it.**

"**Yes," she says, her eyes bright with tears. "My dear child, you've done so well."**

"**What about the others?" I choke on a sob as the image of Tobias comes into my mind, of how dark and how still his eyes were, how strong and warm his hand was, when we first stood face-to-face. "Tobias, Caleb, my friends?" **

"**They'll care for each other," she says. "That's what people do."**

**I close my eyes.**

**I feel a thread tugging me again, but this time I know that it isn't some sinister force dragging me toward death. This time it's my mother's hand, drawing me into her arms. **

**But then I feel a twinge of fire.**

**The fire that kept me alive during the death serum. The fire I know Tobias sees in me – ever since initiation training. That fire wasn't my own strength and invincibility, no. that fire was greater. The love that keeps me going everyday. That strength that proves durable, like woven iron. In Christina, Zeke, Cara. **

**Tobias. **

**That love is what is invincible, eternal. It's bigger than what I am capable of doing myself. **

**I feel the faint embers inside me.**

**And maybe, just maybe, it's enough.**

**I believe it.**

**And before all consciousness leaves me, the footsteps I noticed earlier stop.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-ONE**

**TOBIAS**

**EVELYN BRUSHES THE tears from her eyes with her thumb. We stand by the windows, shoulder to shoulder, watching the snow swirl past. Some of the flakes gather on the windowsill outside, piling at the corners. **

**The feeling has returned to my hands. As I stare out at the world, dusted in white, I feel like everything has begun again, and it will be better this time. **

"**I think I can get in touch with Marcus over the radio to negotiate a peace agreement," Evelyn says. "He'll be listening in; he'd be stupid not to."**

"**Before you do that, I made a promise I have to keep," I say. I touch Evelyn's shoulder. I expected to see strain at the edges of ger smile, but I don't.**

**I feel a twinge of guilt. I didn't come here to ask her to lay down arms for me, to trade in everything she's worked for just to get me back. But then again, I didn't come here to give her any choice at all. I guess Tris was right - -when you have to choose between two bad options, you pick the one that saves the people you love. I wouldn't have been saving Evelyn by giving her that serum. I would have been destroying her.**

**Peter sits with his back to the wall in the hallway. He looks up at me when I lean over him, his dark hair stuck to his forehead from the melted snow.**

"**Did you reset her?" he says.**

"**No," I say.**

"**Didn't think you would have the nerve."**

"**It's not about nerve. You know what? Whatever." I shake my head and hold up the vial of memory serum. "Are you still set on this?"**

**He nods.**

"**You could just do the work, you know," I say. "You could make better decisions, make a better life."**

"**Yeah, I could," he says, "But I won't. We both know that."**

**I do know that. I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten. He is afraid that he will not be able to put in that work, that he will squander those days, and that they will leave him worse off than he is now. And I understand that feeling – I understand being afraid of yourself.**

**So I have him sit on one of the couches, and I ask him what he wants me to tell him about himself, after his memories disappear like smoke. He just shakes his head. Nothing. He wants to retain nothing.**

**Peter takes the vial with a shaking hand and twists off the cap. The liquid trembles inside it, almost spilling over the lip. He holds it under his nose to smell it.**

"**How much should I drink?" he says, and I think I hear his teeth chattering.**

"**I don't think it makes a difference," I say**

"**Okay. Well . . . here goes." He lifts the vial up to the light like he is toasting me.**

**When he touches it to his mouth, I say, "Be brave."**

**Then he swallows.**

**And I watch Peter disappear.**

**The air outside tastes like ice.**

** "Hey! Peter!" I shout, my breaths turning to vapor. **

** Peter stands by the doorway to Erudite headquarters, looking clueless. At the sound of his name – which I have told him at least ten times since he drank the serum – he raises his eyebrows, pointing to his chest. Matthew told us people would be disoriented for a while after drinking the memory serum, but I didn't think "disoriented" meant "stupid" until now.**

** I sigh. "Yes, that's you! For the eleventh time! Come on, let's go."**

** I thought that when I looked at him after he drank the serum, I would still see the initiate who shoved a butter knife into Edward's eye, and the boy who tried to kill my girlfriend, and all the other things he has done, stretching backward for as long as I've known him. But it's easier than I thought to see that he has no idea who he is anymore. His eyes still have that wide, innocent look, but this time, I believe it.**

** Evelyn and I walk side by side, with Peter behind us. The snow has stopped falling now, but enough has collected on the ground that it squeaks under my shoes.**

** We walk to Millennium Park, where the mammoth bean sculpture reflects the moonlight, and then down a set of stairs. As we descend, Evelyn wraps her hand around my elbow to keep her balance, and we exchange a look. I wonder if she is as nervous as I am to face my father again. I wonder if she is nervous every time.**

** At the bottom of the steps is a pavilion with two glass blocks, each one at least three times as tall as I am, at either end. This is where we told Marcus and Johanna we would meet them – both parties armed, to be realistic but even.**

** They are already there. Johanna isn't holding a gun, but Marcus is, and he has it trained on Evelyn. I point the gun Evelyn gave me at him, just to be safe. I notice the planes of his skull, showing through his shaved hair, and the jagged path his crooked nose carves down his face.**

** "Tobias!" Johanna says. She wears a coat in Amity red, dusted with snowflakes. "What are you doing here?"**

"**Trying to keep you all from killing each other," I say. "I'm surprised you're carrying a gun."**

** I nod to the bulge in her coat pocket, the unmistakable contours of a weapon.**

** "Sometimes you have to take difficult measures to ensure peace," Johanna says. "I believe you agree with that, as a principle."**

** "We're not here to chat," Marcus says, looking at Evelyn. "You said you wanted to talk about a treaty."**

** The past few weeks have taken something from him. I can see it in the turned-down corners of his mouth, in the purple skin under his eyes. I see my own eyes set into his skull, and I think of my reflection in the fear landscape, how terrified I was, watching his skin spread over mine like a rack. I am still nervous that I will become him, even now, standing at offs with him with my mother at my side, like I always dreamed I would when I was a child.**

** But I don't think that I'm still afraid.**

** "Yes," Evelyn says. "I have some terms for us both to agree to. I think you will find them fair. If you agree to them, I will step down and surrender whatever weapons I have that my people are not using for personal protection. I will leave the city and not return."**

** Marcus laughs. I'm not sure if it's a mocking laugh or a disbelieving one. He's equally capable of either sentiment, an arrogant and deeply suspicious man. **

** "Let her finish,: Johanna says quietly, tucking her hands into her sleeves.**

** "in return," Evelyn says, "you will not attack or try to seize control of the city. You will allow those people who wish to leave and seek a new life elsewhere to do so. You will allow those who choose to stay to **_**vote**_** on new leaders and a new social system. And most importantly, **_**you, Marcus**_**, will not be eligible to lead them."**

** It is the only purely selfish term of the peace agreement. She told me she couldn't stand the thought of Marcus duping more people into following him, and I didn't argue with her.**

** Johanna raises her eyebrows. I notice that she has pulled her hair back on both sides, to reveal the scar in its entirety. She looks better that way – stronger, when she is not hiding behind a curtain of hair, hiding who she is.**

** "No deal," Marcus says. "I am the leader of these people."**

** "Marcus," Johanna says.**

** He ignores her. "**_**You**_** don't get to decide whether I lead them or not because you have a grudge against me, Evelyn!"**

** "Excuse me," Johanna says loudly. "Marcus, what she is offering is too good to be true – we get everything we want without all the violence! How can you possibly say no?"**

** "Because I am the rightful leader of these people!" Marcus says. "I am the leader of the Allegiant! I – " **

** "No, you are not," Johanna says calmly. "**_**I**_** am the leader of the Allegiant. And you are going to agree to this treaty, or I am going to tell them that you had a chance to end this conflict without bloodshed if you sacrificed your pride, and you said no." **

** Marcus's passive mask is gone, revealing the malicious face beneath it. But even he can't argue with Johanna, whose perfect calm and perfect threat have mastered him. He shakes his head but doesn't argue again.**

** "I agree to your terms," Johanna says, and she holds out her hand, her footsteps squeaking in the snow.**

** Evelyn removes her glove fingertip by fingertip, reaches across the gap, and shakes.**

** "In the morning we should gather everyone together and tell them the new plan," Johanna says. "can you guarantee a safe gathering?"**

** "I'll do my best," Evelyn says.**

** I check my watch. An hour has passed since Amar and Christina separated from us near the Hancock building, which means he probably knows that the serum virus didn't work. Or maybe he doesn't. Either way, I have to do what I came here to do – I have to find Zeke and his mother and tell them what happened to Uriah. **

** "I should go," I say to Evelyn. "I have something else to take care of. But I'll pick you up from the city limits tomorrow afternoon?"**

** "That sounds good," Evelyn says,and she rubs my arm briskly with a gloved hand, like she used to when I came in from the cold as a child.**

** "You won't be back, I assume?" Johanna says to me. "You've found a life for yourself on the outside?"**

** "I have," I say. "Good luck in here. The people outside – they're going to try to shut the city down. You should be ready for them."**

** Johanna smiles. "I'm sure we can negotiate with them."**

** She offers me her hand, and I shake it. I feel Marcus's eyes on me like an oppressive weight threatening to crush me. I force myself to look at him. **

** "Good-bye," I say to him, and I mean it.**

**Hana, Zeke's mother, has small feet that don't touch the ground when she sits in the easy chair in their living room. She is wearing a ragged black bathrobe and slippers, but the air she has, with her hands folded in her lap and her eyebrows raised, is so dignified that I feel like I am standing in front of a world leader. I glance at Zeke, who is rubbing his face with his fists to wake up.**

**Amar and Christina found them, not among the other revolutionaries near the Hancock building, but in their family apartment in the Pire, above dauntless headquarters. I only found them because Christina thought to leave Peter and me a note with their location on the useless truck. Peter is waiting in the new van Evelyn found for us to drive to the Bureau.**

"**I'm sorry," I say. "I don't know where to start."**

"**You might begin with the worst," Hana says. "Like what exactly happened to my son."**

"**He was seriously injured during an attack," I say. "There was an explosion, and he was very close to it."**

"**Oh God," Zeke says, and he rocks back and forth like his body wants to be a child again, soothed by motion as a child is.**

**But hana just bends her head, hiding her face from me.**

**Their living room smells like garlic and onion, maybe remnants from that night's dinner. I lean my shouldr into the white wall by the foorway. Hanging crookedly next to me is a picture of the family – Zeke as a toddler, Uriah as a baby, balancing on his mother's lap. Their father's face is pierced in several places, nose and ear and lip, but his wide, bright smile and dark complexion are more familiar to me, because he passed them both to his sons.**

"**He has been in a coma since then," I say. "And . . ."**

"**And he isn't going to wake up," Hana says, her voice strained. "That is what you came to tell us, right?"**

"**Yes," I say. "I came to collect you so that you can make a decision on his behalf."**

"**A decision?" Zeke says. "You mean, to **_**unplug**_** him or not?"**

"**Zeke," Hana says, and she shakes her head. He sinks back into the couch. The cushions seem to wrap around him.**

"**Of course we don't want to keep him alive that way," Hana says. "He would want to move on. But we would like to go see him." **

**I nod. "Of course. But there's something else I should say. The attack . . . it was a kind of uprising that involved some of the people from the place where we were staying. And I participated in it."**

**I stare at the crack in the floorboards right in front of me, at the dust that has gathered there over time, and wait for a reaction, any reaction. What greets me is only silence.**

"**I didn't do what you asked me," I say to Zeke. "I didn't watch out for him the way I should have. And I'm sorry."**

**I chance a look at him. And he is just sitting still, staring at the empty vase on the coffee table. It is painted with faded pink roses.**

"**I think we need some time with this," Hana says. She clears her throat, but it doesn't help her tremulous voice.**

"**I wish I could give it to you," I say. "But we're going back to the compound very soon, and you have to come with us."**

"**All right," Hana says. "If you can wait outside, we will be there in five minutes."**

**The ride back to the compound is slow and dark. I watch the moon disappear and reappear behind the clouds as we bump over the ground. When we reach the outer limits of the city, it begins to snow again, large, alight flakes that swirl in front of the headlights. I wonder if Tris is watching it sweep across the pavement and gather in piles by the airplanes. I wonder if she is living in a better world than the one I left, among people who no longer remember what it is to have pure genes.**

** Christina leans forward to whisper into my ear. "so you did it? It worked?"**

**I nod. In the rearview mirror I see her touch her face with both hands, grinning into her palms. I know how she feels: safe. We are all safe.**

"**Did you inoculate your family?" I say.**

"**Yep. We found them with the Allegiant, in the Hancock building," she says. "But the time for the reset has passed – it looks like Tris and Caleb stopped it."**

**Hana and Zeke murmur to each other on the way, marveling at the strange, dark world we move through. Amar gives the basic explanations as we go, looking back at them instead of the road far too often for my comfort. I try to ignore my surges of panic as he almost veers into streetlights or road barriers, and focus instead on the snow.**

**I have always hated the emptiness that winter brings, the blank landscape and the stark difference between sky and ground, the way it transforms trees into skeletons and the city into a wasteland. Maybe this winter I can be persuaded otherwise.**

**We drive past the fences and stop by the front doors, which are no longer manned by guards. We get out, and Zeke seizes his mother's hand to steady her as she muffles through the snow. As we walk into the compound, I know for a fact that Caleb succeeded, because there is no one in sight. That can only mean that they have been reset, their memories forever altered.**

"**Where is everyone?" Amar says.**

**We walk through the abandoned security checkpoint without stopping. On the other side, I see Cara. The side of her face is badly bruised, and there's a bandage on her head, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the troubled look on her face. **

"**What is it?" I say.**

** Cara shakes her head.**

"**Where's Tris?" I say.**

"**I'm sorry, Tobias."**

"**Sorry about what?" Christina says roughly. "Tell us what **_**happened**_**!"**

"**Tris went into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb," Cara says. "She survived the death serum, and set off the memory serum, but . . . she was shot. Caleb was the one who ran back for her and heard the gun go off. He shot David too. She's in the hospital . . . And she's not going to make it. I'm so sorry."**

**Most of the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris is still alive and well, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn't leave me here alone, she wouldn't go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.**

"**No," Christina says, shaking her head. "No way. There has to be some mistake."**

**Cara's eyes well up with tears. Christina hunches over, unable to support her own grief, and Cara embraces her, and all I'm doing is standing still.**

**It's then that I realize: Of course Tris would go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.**

**Of course she would.**

**Christina yells something, but to me her voice sounds muffled, like I have submerged my head underwater. The details of Cara's face have also become difficult to see, the world smearing together into dull colors.**

_**She's not going to make it**_**. All I can do is stand still – I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is alright. **

**Then I'm running. **

**CHAPTER**

**FIFTY-TWO**

**TOBIAS**

**WHEN HER BODY first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable – except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first.**

**Even I didn't jump first.**

**Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.**

**Beautiful.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-THREE**

**TOBIAS**

**BUT THAT WASN'T the first time I ever saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, and at my mother's false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn't see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped.**

**I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-FOUR**

**TRIS**

**THIS IS STRANGE. I can hear the muffled footsteps and weak voices that pass, but I can't grasp their direction . . . or my direction. Where am I? What kind of dream is this? **

**I don't know if I like this. **

**I feel my mother's arms around me like when I was in the Weapons Lab. She's still here.**

**I'm still here.**

"**Mom? What's going on?" I say. It's strange. I'm thinking in my mind, yes, but my words – my words are still in the confinement of my head, as if in a chamber, locked like my thoughts. **

**I feel something like panic swell up inside me. If this is death – it's suffocating, restricting me like I'm hinged to a table. My mother smoothes my hair – or it seems that way at least – calming me, and she is successful. I relax in her arms.**

"**It is difficult to explain, Beatrice." She says softly. "You must have decided something, something that sparked in you, keeping your heart beating long enough for the doctors to take over." **

**Then we must be in the Hospital. And those noises I hear shuffling by must be people passing in the halls. This makes sense. I relax a little more. **

**But what am I doing here? Why am I conscious in my mind but immobile everywhere else? Why is my mother still with me? She's dead. My mother, my father . . . and I am supposed to be too. What happened in the Weapons Lab? What – **

_**You must have made a decision.**_

**A spark.**

**I hear footsteps – slow, unwilling – come close. Their sound is clear, but distant. Outside of the chamber that has me and my mother shut inside. The footsteps stop next to me. **

**Silence.**

**Then I feel pressure – heat from a long-fingered hand pressed firmly against my own. Familiar.**

**I hear a sniffle and then a sob escaping someone that could only be the voice of Christina. The pressure on my hand intensifies as Tobias's hand squeezes mine, pleading. I know what he's thinking. If he does this hard enough, I'll wake up. I'll come back to him. **

**I need to come back to him.**

**I don't know how long he's here or if Christina has left or not. All of my awareness is on the heat and pressure surging from his hand to mine – my longing to return my own heat and force. **

**I need to come back to him.**

**I don't know how. **

**How? I'm cocooned in my own head, lost somewhere in the cavity of my body. Immobile. Unyielding.**

**No.**

** Heat dissolves from my hand as I hear Tobias's movement – his knees hitting the floor. The most painful sound escapes his mouth, in defeat. His cry breaks from his mouth like pieces of thick ceramic tile colliding and cracking against hard, cold ground. I feel the impact.**

**Lonely, agonizing, numb, hopeless.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-FIVE**

**TOBIAS**

**IN THE DAYS that follow, it's movement, not stillness, that helps to keep the grief at bay, so I walk the compound halls instead of sleeping, thinking only on things I can't feel. I watch everyone else recover from the memory serum that altered them permanently as if from a great distance. **

** Those lost in the memory serum haze are gathered into groups and given the truth: that human nature is complex, that all our genes are different, but neither damaged nor pure. They are also given the lie: that their memories were erased because of a freak accident, and that they were on the verge of lobbying the government for equality for GDs.**

** I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already. My hands shake as I stop by the control room to watch the city on the screens. Johanna is arranging transportation for those who want to leave the city. They will come here to learn the truth. I don't know what will happen to those who remain in Chicago, and I'm not sure I care.**

** I shove my hands into my pockets and watch for a few minutes, then walk away again, trying to match my footsteps to my heartbeat, or to avoid the cracks between the tiles. When I walk past the entrance, I see a small group of people gathered by the stone sculpture, one of them in a wheelchair – Nita.**

** I walk past the useless security barrier and stand at a distance, watching them. Reggie steps on the stone slab and opens a valve in the bottom of the water tank. The drops turn into a stream of water, and soon water gushes out of the tank, splattering all over the slab, soaking the bottom of Reggie's pants.**

** "Tobias?"**

** I shudder a little. It's Caleb. I turn away from the voice, searching for an escape route.**

** "Wait. Please," he says.**

** I don't want to look at him, to measure how much, or how little, he grieves for her. And I don't want to think about how, for such a miserable coward, she's now in the same state as Uriah, never to wake up again, about how he wasn't worth her life.**

** Still, I do look at him, wondering if I can see some of her live face in his, still hungry for her even though I know she's gone, holding a sick facade of life by a machine's control of her heartbeat. **

** His hair is unwashed and unkempt, his green eyes bloodshot, his mouth twitching into a frown.**

** He does not look like her.**

** "I don't mean to bother you," he says. "But I have something to tell you. Something **_**she**_** told me to tell you, before . . ."**

** "Just get on with it," I say, before he tries to finish the sentence.**

** "She told me that if she didn't survive, I should tell you . . ." Caleb chokes, then pulls himself up straight, fighting off tears. "That she didn't want to leave you."**

** I should feel something, hearing her last words to me, shouldn't I? I feel nothing. I feel farther away than ever.**

** "Yeah? I say harshly. "Then why did she? Why didn't she let you die?"**

"**You think I'm not asking myself that question?" Caleb says. "She loved me. Enough to hold me at gunpoint so she could take my place. I have no idea why, but that's just the way it is." **

**He turns from me, as if to leave, but instead he looks at me with tired and stinging wet eyes and adds, "I did what I could after that. After she left me with the guards, they ran me out of the hall and toward the exit of the building, and I usually would have left with them since it would have meant safety, but I had to do something, to help her somehow. It took me some time but I broke away and ran. As I neared the hallway to the Weapons Lab, I heard a gun fire and sprinted to the busted doors where Tris had left her gun. I don't know what I was thinking or how I managed to react at all, but once I saw the armed body in the Weapons Lab, I fired."**

** Caleb looks through me now, as if he's reliving the scene with disdain. "That's when I saw her." Pain strikes his face, "She had just activated the memory spray, but lay slump on the ground, blood collecting around her shoulder and neck . . ." My face feels like stone – hard, dark, and motionless. I don't want to hear this. But I can't move – my limbs like dried cement. So I just stare at him, not quite reaching his eyes as he continues. **

** "I didn't think." He continues, as if he needs me to hear this – for his own process of coping. "I tied off the bleeding from her right shoulder blade and arm, and carried her to the hospital. I don't remember anything after that. . ." His face crumples as his voice breaks into a painful sob. He collects himself a little and looks back at me. "I loved her too," he says sternly, "I love her." **

** He walks away without letting me respond, and it's probably better that way, because I can't think of anything to say that is equal to what I'm feeling. I blink away tears and sit down on the ground, right in the middle of the lobby.**

** I know why she wanted to tell me that she didn't want to leave me. She wanted me to know that this was not another Erudite headquarters, not a lie told to make me sleep while she went to die, not an act of unnecessary self-sacrifice. And I know why Caleb reiterated that he "loves" Tris – because she is not dead. She's not necessarily alive either, but there is hope. . . **_**Stop it.**_** I can't think that way. I know what condition Uriah is in. I know she is in the same state. With the same fate. I cannot bear to cling to useless hope. It will just rip me apart even deeper later on. . . Maybe that's why I haven't visited her. Christina hasn't been anywhere else but back and forth from Uriah's room to Tris's. But how can she bear to see her that way? Her life being supplied by hospital machines. Still, pale, fragile. . . I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes like I can push my tears back into my skull. **_**No crying**_**, I chastise myself. If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.**

** Sometime later I hear voices nearby – Cara and Peter.**

** "This sculpture was a symbol of change," she says to him. "Gradual change, but now they're taking it down."**

** "Oh, really?" Peter sounds eager. "Why?"**

** "um . . . I'll explain later, if that's okay," Cara says. "Do you remember how to get back to the dormitory?"**

** "Yep."**

** "Then . . . go backthere for a while. Someone will be ther to help you."**

** Cara walks over to me, and I cringe in anticipation of her voice. But all she does is sit next to me on the ground, her hands folded in her lap, her back straight. Alert but relaxed, she watches the sculpture where Reggie stands under the gushing water.**

** "You don't have to stay here," I say.**

** "I don't have anywhere to be," she says. "And the quiet is nice."**

** So we sit side by side, staring at the water, in silence.**

** "There you are," Christina says jogging toward us. Her face is swollen and her voice is listless, like a heavy sigh. "Come on, it's time. They're unplugging him."**

** I shudder at the word, but push myself to my feet anyway. Hana and Zeke have been hovering over Uriah's body since we got here, their fingers finding his, their eyes searching for life. But there is no life left, just the machine beating his heart.**

** Cara walks behind Christina and me as we go toward the hospital. I haven't slept in days but I don't feel tired, not in the way I normally do, though my body aches as I walk. Christina and I don't speak, but I know our thoughts are the same, fixed on Uriah, on his last breaths.**

** We make it to the observation window outside Uriah's room, and Evelyn is there – Amar picked her up in my stead, a few days ago. She tries to touch my shoulder and I yank it away, not wanting to be comforted.**

** Inside the room, Zeke and Hana stand on either side of Uriah. Hana is holding one of his hands, and Zeke is holding the other. A doctor stands near the heart monitor, a clipboard outstretched, held out not to Hana or Zeke but to **_**David**_**. Sitting in his wheelchair. His wounds bandaged. He's hunched and dazed, like all the others who have lost their memories.**

** "What is **_**he**_** doing there?" I feel like all my muscles and bones and nerves are on fire.**

** "He's still technically the leader of the Bureau, at least until they replace him," Cara says from behind me. "tobias, he doesn't remember anything. The man you knew doesn't exist anymore; he's as good as dead. **_**That**_** man doesn't remember kill – "**

** "Shut up!" I snap. David signs the clupboard and turns around, pushing himself toward the door. It opens, and I can't stop myself – I lunge toward him, and only Evvelyn's wiry frame stops me from wrapping my hands around his throat. He gives me a strange look and pushes himself down the hallway as I press against my mother's arm, which feels life a bar across my shoulders.**

** "Tobias," Evelyn says. "Calm. Down."**

** "Why didn't someone lock him up?" I demand, and my eyes are too blurry to see out of.**

** "Because he still works for the government," Cara says. "Just because they've declared it an unfortunate accident doesn't mean they've fired everyone. And the government isn't going to lock him up just because he killed a rebel under duress."**

** "A rebel," I repeat. "That's all she is now?"**

** "Was," Cara says softly, reminding me of the reality of her condition. "And no, of course not, but that's what the government sees her as."**

** I'm about to respond, but Christina interrupts. "Guys, they're doing it."**

** In Uriah's room, Zeke and Hana join their free hands over Uriah's body. I see Hana's lips moving, but I can't tell what she's saying – do the Dauntless have prayers for the dying? The Abnegation react to death with silence and service, not words. I find my anger ebbing away, and I'm lost in muffled grief again, this time not just for Tris, but for Uriah, whose smile is burned into my memory. My friend's brother, and then my friend, too, though not for long enough to let his humor work its way into me, not for long enough.**

** The doctor flips some switches, his clipboard clutched to his stomach, and the machines stop breathing for Uriah. Zeke's shoulders shake, and Hana squeezes his hand tightly, until her knuckles go white.**

** Then she says something, and her hands spring open, and she steps back from Uriah's body. Letting him go.**

** I move away from the window, walking at first, and then running, pushing my way through the hallways, careless, blind, empty.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-SIX**

**TRIS**

** I HEAR FRANTIC footsteps pass the open door and then stop. His breath is heavy as the door closes shut and his feet shuffle slowly toward me. I can hear his cautious movements. I can feel the heat of his strong quivering hand lingering close to the side of my cheek and jaw line, hesitating. A sigh escapes his mouth cracking into a sob on the way out. **

** My body feels dead. As if this weight is pressing against my chest and shoulders and legs, keeping me still as a corps. I can't respond.**

** "Tris." He whispers close to my ear, pleading, like the last time he visited this room. Christina, Caleb, Cara, Matthew. They've entered time and time again, but Tobias has not. I don't blame him. I wouldn't want to see him like this if the tables were turned. I may be awake in my head, but to them, I'm as cold as stone.**

** "Tris, I . . ." he pauses for a moment, then his voice is louder. Almost angry. "You're gone. And crying feels so useless, so stupid! But it's all I can do." He breaths out, then he pulls his head where it touches the cold surface of mine. His touch is electric and sends hot waves through my head and neck. "Everything inside me screams for you, Tris!" He cries out quietly, intimately. "For just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more . . ." He trails off and doesn't say a word for a long time. And still I'm locked up in the confinement of my mind. Still a thread of darkness tugging at me. And I'm unable to scream his name and meet his gaze, to wrap my arms around his waist and fit my lips to his once more. To join with him, and Christina and Cara and Caleb. **

** Suddenly the warmth of his head against mine is replaced with cool space as he must be pulling away.**

_**No. **_

** "I don't want to live without you," he says calmly, which disturbs me. "So I'm not going to."**

** What? No. No. What is that supposed to mean? **

** I feel the movement as he stands up and begins to leave, but his footsteps stop as the door opens, and he says sternly, "I love you, Tris." And the door shuts. **

** I want to explode. But in this world – this space – I am safe from pain and weight and emotions. I feel that fire, still faint, but evident. I know it's present, but I can't grab it – like it's a dart of light and its source I can't find. It's present, but not quite tangible. Not yet.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-SEVEN**

**TOBIAS**

**THE NEXT DAY I take a truck from the compound. The people there are still recovering from their memory loss, so no one tries to stop me. I drive over the railroad tracks toward the city, my eyes wandering over the skyline but not really taking it in.**

** When I reach the fields that separate the city from the outside world, I press down the accelerator. The truck crushes dying grass and snow beneath its tires, and soon the ground turns to the pavement in the Abnegation sector, and I barely feel the passage of time.**

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-EIGHT**

**TRIS**

**I FEEL MY mother's arms. They have not ceased to be strong and gentle around me, holding me close to her as we lay still and silent. All that is to hear is the clouded buzz of the machines and the monotonous beep of the heart monitor. **

** I think about my mother cutting my hair back in Abnegation. Our last dinner together as a family. The moment when she hugged me before the Choosing Ceremony and told me, "I love you, no matter what." **

** "How things have changed, Beatrice, but that truth has never faltered." She says to me. **

** "I know, but how did it come to this?" I respond. "The overtakings, the revolutions, the betrayals, the deaths?" So many people, gone . . ."**

** "We can't erase what has taken place, Beatrice." I feel her arms pull me closer, comforting me. "But we can rejoice in the love that has proven unwavering through every battle."**

** She's right. When she died, it was out of love to protect me. The same goes for my father. It was love that Tobias followed me into Erudite. **_**If you die, I die too.**_** He said. And****it was out of love for my brother that I took his place, knowing that I could survive.**

** I could survive. **

** So consumed in my thoughts, I don't hear Christina come in until her voice is in my ear and her hand grasping mine. **

** "Hey, Tris." She says weakly. "I haven't talked to you in a couple of days." Her voice is hesitant. "We watched Uriah's family pull the plug yesterday . . ." She pauses for a moment. And then whispers, "We need you back, Tris . . . Tobias needs you." The heavy weight presses on my chest again.**

** Tobias.**

**After my parents' death and the factions were destroyed, I didn't know who I was anymore. But he never doubted me. He has proven his love for me, I can't leave him now. I am one with him. Without him I'm only half – he's only half. United, we are whole. And I want out of this chamber – so safe and still . . . and locked inside my mind. I want out now.**

** Suddenly the fire is not so faint, it's hot. It is no longer a dart of light that I can't grab. It's tangible. **

** But I feel the tug of my mother's arms around me. Cool and strong, hindering me from embracing the fire, but so comforting. I've been seeking her embrace for so long, and now she's here. **

** "You can choose, hunny." She assures me. "It's okay."**

** "But if I choose them, you'll be gone."**

** "And if you choose me, **_**you**_** will be gone." I know what she means. Even now, she is undeniably selfless. If I go with her, I will leave them behind. Cara. Caleb. Christina. And Tobias. **

_**If you die, I die too**_

** Tobias's words echo in my head from when he followed me into Erudite Headquarters. I didn't know who I was after my parents died. And ever since that moment in the Weapons Lab, standing between a task I had to finish and death, I understand what my parents did for me. I am no longer haunted by my decisions or my parents' outcome. But I know one thing that remains for me here. Tobias. He is a part of me, and I him. **

** "I will always be with you, Beatrice." She tells me, "Go, live the rest of your life."**

** And I feel her arms fade, as the fire heats up inside me.**

** "I love you, mom. No matter what." I see the flame and feel it blaze as I crack through the shell I've been encased in, and my eyelids slowly raise open. **

** "Tris?" Christina looks at me, astonished. "Tris!" She hugs me and begins crying. I think I cry too. She finally looks up and grins, "You are impossible, you know that?"**

** We laugh and wipe our tears away, and she helps me sit up. I feel the aches from my wounds as I shift my weight.**

**It will take a while for my body to heal. Shortly after, a doctor enters with the same astonished look on his face as Christina's. He checks my vitals and sends a report. **

** "Familiar voices and physical contact is said to stimulate nerves cells and repair the brain damage that causes you to enter a coma." He explains. "But with the amount of blood you initially lost from your wounds and, in effect, the deprivation of oxygen from your brain cells, it is nothing short of a miracle that you are now responsive. I offer my felicitations on your recovery." He shakes his head slightly in amazement and walks out.**

** As soon as the doctor leaves, Matthew runs down the hall yelling for Christina.**

** "Matt! Tris is awake!"**

** Matthhew enters the room and is shocked, but not in a joyful manner that we expect. He looks terrified.**

** "What is it, Matthew?" I finally say something. "Where's Tobias?" I ask both of them.**

** "That's what I ran here for." Matthew says, still disturbed. "I saw Tobias take a truck and a vial of memory serum this morning. We need to get him now, but I know he has no reason to listen to me."**

** No.**

** "No, He wouldn't do that. He's not a coward." Christina says.**

** He can't do this. He can't erase his memory. Not now, not ever. "We need to leave, now." My voice is so weak.**

** "There's no way you're leaving here, you're too debilitated, and exhausted." Matthew affirms.**

** "He may not listen to me, though." Christina argues, "And he sure won't believe me if I tell him she's awake."**

** "We are wasting time! Let's go!" I stand up and fall back against the bed, body throbbing, my head spinning. Matthew objects, but Christina helps steady me. And then we take off. **

**CHAPTER **

**FIFTY-NINE**

**TOBIAS**

** The streets are all the same, but my hands and feet know where to go, even if my mind doesn't bother to guide them. I pull up to the house near the stop sign, with the cracked front walk.**

** My house.**

** I walk through the front door and up the stairs, still with that muffled feeling in my ears, like I am drifting far away from the world. People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.**

** I press my palm to the panel covering the mirror upstairs, and push it aside. Though the light of sunset is orange, creeping across the floor and illuminating my face from below, I have never looked paler; the circles under my eyes have never been more pronounced. I have spent the past few days somewhere between sleeping and waking, not quite able to manage either extreme.**

** I plug the hair clippers into the outlet near the mirror. The right guard is already in place, so all I have to do is run it through my hair, bending my ears down to protect them from the blade, turning my head to check the back of my neck for places I might have missed. The shorn hair falls on my feet and shoulders, itching whatever bare skin it finds. I run my hand over my head to make sure it's even, but I don't need to check, not really. I learned to do this myself when I was young.**

** I spend a lot of time brushing it from my shoulders and feet, then sweeping it into a dustpan. When I finish, I stand in front of the mirror again, and I can see the edges of my tattoo, the Dauntless flame.**

** I take the vial of memory serum from my pocket. I know that one vial will erase most of my life, but it will target memories, not facts. I will still know how to write, how to speak, how to put together a computer, because that data was stored in different parts of my brain. But I won't remember anything else.**

** The experiment is over. Johanna successfully negotiated with the government – David's superiors – to allow the former faction members to stay in the city, provided they are self-sufficient, submit to the government's authority, and allow outsiders to come in and join them, making Chicago just another metropolitan area, like Milwaukee. The Bureau, once in charge of the experiement, will now keep order in Chicago's city limits.**

** It will be the only metropolitan area in the country governed by people who don't believe in genetic damage. A kind of paradise. Matthew told me he hopes people from the fringe will trickle in to fill all the empty spaces, and find there a life more prosperous then the one they left.**

** All that I want is to become someone new. In this case, Tobias Johnson, son of Evelyn Johnson. Tobias Johnson may have lived a dull and empty life, but he is at least a whole person, not this fragment of a person that I am, too damaged by pain to become anything useful.**

** "Matthew told me you stole some of the memory serum and a truck," Says a voice at the end of the hallway. Christina's. "I have to say, I didn't really believe him."**

** I must not have heard her enter the house through the muffle. Even her voice sounds like it is traveling through water to reach my ears, and it takes me a few seconds to make sense of what she says. When I do, I look at her and say, "Then why did you come, if you didn't believe him?**

** "Just in case," she says, starting toward me. "Plus, I wanted to see the city one more time before it all changes. Give me that vial, Tobias."**

** "No." I fold my fingers over it to protect it from her. "This is my decision, not yours."**

** Her dark eyes widen, and her face is radiant with sunlight. It makes every strand of her thick, dark hair gleam orange like it's on fire.**

** "This is **_**not **_**your decision," she says. "This is the decision of a coward, and you're a lot of things, Four, but not a coward. Never."**

** "Maybe I am now," I answer passively. "Things have changed. I'm all right with it."**

** "No, you're not."**

** I feel so exhausted all I can do is roll my eyes.**

** "I know how it feels to want to forget everything," she says. "I also know how it feels to lose someone you love for no reason, and to want to trade all your memories of them for just a moment's peace."**

** I glare at her with pained anger. She wraps her hand around mine, which is wrapped around the vial. I let her.**

** "I didn't know Will long," she continues, "but he changed my life. He changed **_**me**_**. And I know Tris changed you even more."**

** The hard expression she wore a moment ago melts away, and she touches my shoulders, lightly. I look at were with apathy. **

** "The person you became with her is worth being," she says. "If you swallow that serum, you'll never be able to find your way back to him."**

** "Shut up!" I burst, anger now rolling through me.**

** "You can't become a person she would hate," Christina says, quietly this time.**

** "And I would hate this."**

** Her voice, rough and frail, comes from the same place that Christina's did earlier – the end of the hallway. **

** What?**

** I freeze. I'm going insane. There's no way. I wouldn't **_**allow**_** myself to hope that she would make it . . .**

** "Tobias." She walks slowly toward me, fragile and pail, using the wall for support. I can't move. "You would erase me from your memory?" She slows to a stop, and her rough voice quivers. "Like I didn't even matter to you?"**

** Something – anger, shock, relief – stampedes through me, hot and lively, and the muffled feeling around my ears falls away, making even this quiet Abnegation street sound loud. I shudder with the force of it. **

** I jump toward her, closing the gap between us, and crush her gently to my chest. And the tears come again, like when I saw her lifeless body, and this time, relief comes with them, hot and permeating in my chest. Her thin arms slip around me, uncertain at first but then stronger, more confident, more sure of herself and me.**

** No embrace will ever feel the same, because no one else will ever be like her. We stand together, not saying a word, for a long time.**

** I look down at her, brushing her soft cheek gently with my thumb, consumed by the beauty of the light from the window glowing on her face. **

** "If you **_**dare **_**suggest that again," returning to her previous questions, "I'll – "**

** "You'll what?" she pulls me closer, grinning. "Hurt me? You know, there's a word for big, strong men who attack women, and it's – "**

** I press my lips eagerly to hers before she can finish her sentence. Oh how long I've waited for this reunion. I can breathe. Tris is alive. I am alive. I guess a fire this bright can choose to thrive. **

**We walk down the stairs and I look at Christina. I remember hating her the first time I met her, because she was a Candor, because words just dribbled out of her mouth unchecked, careless. But over time she showed me who she really was, a forgiving friend, faithful to the truth, brave enough to take action. I can't help but like her now, can't help but see what Tris sees in her. **

** There are other kinds of people in this world. There is the kind like Tris, who, after suffering and betrayal, could still find enough love to lay down her life instead of her brother's. Or the kind like Cara, who could still forgive the person who shot her brother in the head. Or Christina, who lost friend after friend but still decided to stay open, to make new ones.**

** "I know Zeke's still weird around you," Christina says, slinging an arm across my shoulders. "But I can be your friend in the meantime. We can even exchange bracelets if you want, like the Amity girls used to." Tris laughs.**

** "I don't think that will be necessary."**

** We walk out to the street together, Tris's hand in mine, and Christina's arm over Tris's shoulder. The sun has slipped behind the building of Chicago, and in the distance I hear a train rushing over the rails, but we are moving away from this place and all that it has meant to us, and that is all right.**

**There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.**

** But sometimes it doesn't.**

** Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, rejoicing in times of great blessings, and persevering through times of great change, the slow walk toward a better life.**

** That is the sort of bravery we must have now.**


End file.
